Not One Returns to Tell
by GuiltyAdonis
Summary: In which a colonial transport gets a rude diversion, the breeding facility on planet Tycho predictably loses power, and some scientists discover the transformative powers of internecivus raptus. Or, in which a test subject named Laurel learns the meaning of 'Stockholm syndrome'. Or alternately, in which Weyland-Yutani should have just given up three movies ago.
1. Judecca

_AN: Hello all! First story on a shiny new account so we'll see how this goes~! A couple things before we begin:_

_First off I have the creepiest obsession with the aliens that you'll ever see omg they're so cool omg aughaugugugh so if I start ranting about their biology or something just, y'know, smack me and I'll shut up  
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_Second, I don't have a beta because I don't really know how the system works and none of my irl friends are willing to read my creepy human/bugmonster fanfiction so if you see spelling or grammar mistakes or have suggestions by all means I'd love to hear them_

_**EDIT: Apparently there's another (similar?) story entitled 'God Save the Queen' (which is entirely unsurprising when I think about it, seriously) so I have changed the title to a different, somewhat more obscure, stupid literary reference. Hope I haven't offended anyone! Sorry!**  
_

_okay shutting up now enjoy the story Owl out~_

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**I.**

_**"**Strange, is it not? that of the myriads who _  
_Before us pass'd the door of Darkness through,_  
_Not one returns to tell us of the Road, _  
_Which to discover we must travel too.**"**_

* * *

_01:11:03:03:23:47:28.04:0.0:00:00:00:00:00:00_

TO: Morgan Temple «mtem(a)wyindustries**.**col»  
FROM: Mason Gauphner, PhD «mgau(a)wyindustries**.**col»

Dear Ms. Temple,

I've just been notified of your imminent visit to the station, and am glad to say that I believe you'll be entirely satisfied with our results. There is no cause for alarm, though I am grateful for your superiors' caution. Discretion in such a delicate operation is obviously of the utmost importance.

I am aware of your concerns, and I hope that I may be able to put them to rest. The United Systems Military were correct in pursuing genetic fusion as a solution to the unfortunate behavioral problems; however, it is my belief that they were proceeding in exactly the wrong direction. It is a definitive trait of _i. raptus_ that a significant portion of their genetic coding is extrapolated from that of a foreign host; the voraciousness with which their genetic material overpowers and integrates that of the host species is astounding. Assuming that the introduction of human DNA to the species would render them tractable was therefore irresponsible and dangerous, and I would go so far as to pronounce that assumption completely imbecilic.

On the other hand, integrating _i. raptus_ DNA — such as it is — into a human body is far more likely to produce the results the United Systems Military were hoping for in the first place. Sufficiently small genetic samples introduced intravenously should grant a human subject numerous benefits without endangering their native biological programming. Finding this balance is the primary hindrance to the success of this project as of the time of my writing to you.

I realize, of course, that a simple email will be insufficient to assuage your rightful concerns about what is undoubtedly the most misfortunate project in corporate history. Hopefully your inspection will prove fruitful in that regard. I can only express my derision for my predecessors in this matter, and I wholeheartedly look forward to meeting you in person.

Yours Sincerely,

Dr. Mason Gauphner  
mgau(a)wyindustries**.**col

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**II.**

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_JUDECCA STATION, PLANET TYCHO - KEPLER 22, CONSTELLATION CYGNUS_  
_01:11:02:06:20:22:54.09:0.0:00:00:00:00:00:00_

**CPL. BRIAN TAGGERT, SECURITY**

Taggert couldn't remember the last time it had stopped raining. It was always raining on Tycho, torrential rains, salty and stinging and bitter. Judecca Station stood close to the planet's south pole and so was spared the constant equatorial heat, though there were times when Taggert would have preferred warmth even if it offered no respite from the perpetual rains. It never got truly cold on Tycho, never below forty degrees even in winter. But after five months even forty degrees felt colder than the deepest circle of Hell, despite the fact that for the whole season the planet's little yellow sun — so like Earth's and yet so, so alien — stood glaring and relentless and unsetting for a full half of the short year.

Taggert rocked back in his hard metal chair, leaning his temple against the plate-glass window and staring out at the frigid rain. Directly below the northern security tower was the landing pad, a football field's length of concrete and steel, painted with stark yellow lines and arrows that might as well have been written in Sanskrit for all the information Taggert could glean from them. Beyond this was the perimeter fence, eighteen feet of chain link topped with barbed wire and dotted every hundred yards by steadily-blinking blue lights. The fence seemed sort of redundant to Taggert, in all honesty; the only thing that ever encroached upon Judecca's perimeter was the sea, and this was what made up the predominance of Taggert's field of vision: a blue-black mass of churning waves that crashed against the landing pad with vicious force as if trying to drag away the alien invaders that had built it on this isolated world. Nobody was getting onto the station that way, and there was sure as hell no-one getting off.

Tycho had no true continents; only scattered archipelagos of tiny islands and keys. Judecca Station had claimed the entirety of the northernmost isle of one such chain, and then spread onwards, so that a good thirty percent of the sprawling compound consisted entirely of platforms lifted above the water by a multitude of tubular-steel pilings. From his position in the northern security tower, Taggert had a good view of the station, and the sea beyond, and what little island remained beneath the squat, drab buildings. Massive trees, slick of bark and broad of leaf, rose between the catwalks, providing some small cover from the torrential downpour. In summer they spilled searingly pink blossoms by the truckload, clogging the walkways and filling the entire station with their cloying scent. Taggert was grateful for the flowers' current absence; it would be two of this planet's ten months before they returned, bringing their dizzying smell with them.

Taggert found it thoroughly ironic that the most beautiful thing on this damned island was also one of the most deadly: the trees' flowers and fruits contained a potent and nigh-undetectable neurotoxin that paralyzed in seconds and killed in minutes. The marines who'd first colonized Tycho had discovered this the hard way.

Now, of course, poisonous flora was the least of Taggert's or anyone else's worries. Judecca Station's fences and turrets and guard towers weren't to keep anyone out, after all. They were here to keep something in.

* * *

**ANNA JEONG, MD., MICROSURGERY**

It was the seventh test subject in as many days. Dr. Jeong stood before the operating table, shaking her head in frustration. She remained there long after the subject's corpse had been covered and wheeled away, its blood already beginning to soak through the starched white sheet.

There _had_ to be a better way to get results than by trial and error. Hosts were expensive these days, and smugglers willing to traffic living humans were becoming few and far between. They had little time, fewer resources, and no margin for error. If there were some way to induce a live birth in the human host… but the creature _internecivus raptus_, colloquially known as a 'xenomorph', rejected or overwhelmed all attempts to alter its gestation cycle. And there was no gene therapy that Dr. Jeong knew of that could change the host's body enough to allow them to survive an extremely determined fetus chewing its way out of their chest.

_If there were some way to implant the embryo elsewhere in the body..._ Jeong thought sourly. But forcing the facehugger parasite to impregnate a woman by means the human body was used to had caused the immediate and rather violent death of parasite, fetus, and host alike.

Breeding was grinding slowly to a halt, and Jeong found the notion of simply giving up and letting the units be born according to their nature to be quite distasteful. At the very least, what would they do with all the bodies? Throwing them in the ocean was all well and good, but what would happen if one were to wash up on the shore of a neighboring colony?

No, the best and cheapest option was to find a way for the human host to survive the birth of _i. raptus_. The same host could then be impregnated multiple times with little negative effect. It would save time, money, and resources, and — best of all — if the production of the xenomorph bioweapon didn't require the sacrifice of one human life per creature, imagine how many more sponsors would be willing to publicly back the research project!

(The number of human lives that could be saved was, as far as Jeong was concerned, a pleasant bonus.)

Visions of soaring stocks danced in her mind as she began to tidy up the medical bay. Blood and bile had splattered everywhere from the latest unit's birth, and Jeong groaned aloud in frustration. It always took _hours_ to scrub the tile floors completely clean of bodily fluids, and the permeating stink of ammonia was omnipresent nowadays. Now and then Dr. Jeong would wonder why exactly Weyland-Yutani Industries was so bloody determined to use these things as weapons. They'd lost something like three ships, one penitentiary dwarf planet, an entire colony, and hundreds of employees to this project, and they'd had no success for over a century's worth of experimentation. If that wasn't a completely deranged level of dedication, Jeong didn't know what was. And the cleanup — both physical and corporate — that piled on with each new birth was becoming downright mountainous.

Jeong had to remind herself that simply allowing the death of the host would make her job much easier, and that it had been _her_ idea in the first place to try and alter the gestation process to be less fatal.

_If you give up now_, the tiny part of her that wasn't motivated by money chided, _the_ _deaths of hundreds of human beings will be on your head._

_But you'll be rich,_ she thought.

_You'll be richer if you can birth the xenomorphs live without killing the human test subjects. You could patent your formula. _And_ they wouldn't detract a percentage from your pay for each new host you needed, _her morals insisted.

Putting aside the rather disturbing realization that she was holding a serious moral debate with her own subconscious (and that her subconscious was probably right), Dr. Jeong slid the cover back over the operating table and straightened up, cracking her aching back and stretching her arms out. It had been a very long day, and it wasn't over yet. If she was going to achieve the impossible and create the perfect living factory, she would have to get started right away.

It looked like it was going to be another sleepless night.


	2. Rise and Shine

_AN: Hey wow thanks for the nice reviews guys! :D _

_(a) Lay Down Hunter: if you'd please let me know what's confusing about it, I'll do my best to clarify! Sometimes I think I know what I'm talking about when I actually don't ahaha. Sorry if anyone else had trouble following, and don't hesitate to let me know how I can clear things up!_

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**CHAPTER TWO:** RISE AND SHINE

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_JUDECCA STATION_  
_01:11:02:01:11:17:13.92:0.0:00:00:00:00:00:00_

_**[full name redacted]**_**, SUBJECT 204-D, WEST CARGO BAY**

When the girl woke up, the first thing she saw was a group of faces staring down at her. A bearded man, and a clean-shaven one, and two women: one dark-haired and bronze-skinned, wearing a lab coat and a stethoscope; the other fair and blue-eyed, looking concerned.

The last thing she remembered before this was being put into cryosleep by her mother.

"_I'll see you when the sun rises on Lalonde,"_ Mama had said.

These people were not her Mama, and she was fairly sure she was not on Lalonde 2115. The colony world was supposed to be a garden, with green grass and a huge yellow sky. All she could see right now was a ceiling lined with pipes and patchy with insulation.

"Where am I?" she asked.

"Be quiet," the woman with the stethoscope said.

"_Anna_," said the blonde woman fiercely, putting a hand on her compatriot's arm. "She's just a little girl! David, you can't be all right with this."

The clean-shaven man frowned and rubbed his chin. His eyes crinkled at the corners in thought, and his iron-gray hair was coming free of its short ponytail. He could have been anywhere between thirty and sixty. He reminded her of her Papa.

"We're short on time, Chloe," he said. "The company will shut us down if we don't make quota by the end of this cycle. We have to start the training program by summer and we need at least three hundred units by then."

"But a child!" the blond woman insisted. "How old are you, girl?"

"I'm twelve," she said, staring up at them all, still bleary from cryosleep. "C'n I— can I get out of this pod?"

"No," said the first woman.

"Shut up, Anna, there's no call for this 'good-cop-bad-cop' routine. It's just a goddamn kid, let her stand up and stretch her legs," said the bearded man.

They all stepped back and allowed her to sit up in her cryo pod. She felt achy and tired, and her mouth tasted metallic and dry. She stretched and looked around. Her pod appeared to be in some sort of docking bay. Through an open door in the far wall, she could see a concrete courtyard half-obscured through a curtain of driving rain. There were other cryo pods lined up next to hers, at least thirty, but none had been opened yet.

"Where am I?" she asked again.

"Judecca Station, on Tycho," the blond woman Chloe said, stepping forward once more. She held out a hand and gave a sympathetic smile. "I'm Chloe Yolen. What's your name?"

"I'm Laurel," she said, but she didn't shake the doctor's hand. "What am I doing here? Where is my Mama?"

"Don't ask her name, Chloe, they're supposed to be completely blanked out on arrival," the bearded man said.

"Oh, come now, Praggor, let the girl breathe!" Chloe said. "She's only just come round, it's a miracle she's not heaving. Have you been in cryosleep before?" This was to Laurel.

"Just once," Laurel whispered, throat dry. What was happening? Why would these people not tell her anything? _Where _was her mother? "When we moved from Earth to the ISS. Please, tell me what's going on!"

"You've been chosen to help advance modern warfare," the clean-shaven man said, though he didn't seem to want to look at her. "It's a great honor."

Laurel stared at him and narrowed her eyes. This sounded suspiciously like something out of a penny dreadful, and she did _not _want to be stuck in a badly-written horror download. What was worse, he did not sound entirely convinced of what he was saying. Laurel got the distinct feeling that something was being hidden from her. It was an all-too-familiar feeling, and she didn't like it one bit.

"Joyce, she's twelve, she doesn't give a damn about modern warfare," said the bearded man named Praggor. He turned to Laurel and gave her an apologetic grin, and she decided she rather liked him. "Look, kid, I'm sorry to have to tell you, but your ship got hit by pirates. They took your pod, and we managed to get ahold of it."

"But what about my mother?" Laurel demanded another time. Why wouldn't they just _answer _her! Something was very wrong.

Praggor and the first woman exchanged glances. The woman looked at Laurel coolly.

"I'm afraid that everyone who was not captured was killed," she said. "Once the other cryo chambers are activated, you will of course be allowed to look for your mother. If she is not among those recovered, we must assume the worst."

The expression on her face was one of regret, but her voice was insincere. Laurel glared at her. She'd learned fast on the International Space Station that people immediately assumed she was dumb just because she wasn't an adult, and that they would say all sorts of lies to her and not even try very hard to be convincing. The people here all seemed to conform to this trend, even the kindly Chloe Yolen.

Fine, then. If they wanted to tell Laurel that she'd been kidnapped by pirates, they very well could. She'd just have to figure out what they really wanted from her by herself.

Very quickly, Laurel's initial distress was bleeding away into anger and an odd, fierce sort of joy. She wanted her mother and she wanted her _now_. Rather than let this make her afraid, rather than curl up and cry as part of her so desperately wanted to, Laurel hung onto that fierceness, clung to it as if it were a buoy. She had every right to be angry! Even if these people's story was true and the colony ship had been attacked by pirates, they had no right to be so rude to her! And did they really think she was so naïve as to take their words at face value? Had they already forgotten the bit about her being 'chosen to help advance modern warfare', because Laurel sure hadn't, and she wasn't about to if she could help it.

She balled her hands into fists and stood up in her cryo pod, so suddenly that the members of the little group simultaneously took a step back, blinking in surprise.

"Look," she said fiercely, glaring round at them all. "I don't know who you are and I don't know what you want, but I know what _I _want and that's to go home, fast as I can. So just tell me what it is you're after, what ransom or whatever, and I _swear,_ I'll do it without any trouble. So just stop lying and tell me the truth!"

There was a long silence— faintly startled, Laurel thought. Then the cold dark woman took a step forwards.

"I like this girl," she said, and there was the barest hint of a nasty smile at the corners of her impeccably-glossed lips. "Welcome to the research facility of Judecca. We're a government organization dedicated to creating and training military units that can withstand extremely hostile environments. We're understaffed, overworked, and on a deadline, so every extra body, no matter the age or skill set, is a valuable asset. You'll be put to work in the biolab and given a small stipend if you complete all tasks to our satisfaction. Happy?"

Laurel wasn't, not at all, but she didn't say so. If adults saw you as a kid and you acted like a kid, you could expect to be treated like a kid, which was to say, not very harshly at all. Obedience was, at the moment, both her best weapon and her best defense. So she furrowed her brows and stuck out her lip and tried to look petulant but resigned. It wasn't very difficult, at least the 'petulant' bit.

"All right," the woman said. "Praggor, isn't there some sort of number-crunching you should be doing?"

"Actually, no," he said. "Numbers went in last night, I'm in the clear."

"Then you've got nothing better to do. Get this kid to her new quarters, will you? I've got to get back to the biolab before they test my apparatus without me, and Chloe, don't you have animals to be training?"

"Yes, Dr. Jeong," Yolen said.

"All right, all right," Praggor said, somewhat less meekly than Yolen. He reached out and laid a big, heavy hand on Laurel's shoulder. She started and tried to squirm away, but his grip was painfully strong. "You're coming with me, kid," he said. "We're going to be best friends."

Laurel raised her eyebrows at him and did her best to look unimpressed. Praggor chuckled at her and held out his other hand.

Dr. Jeong was already clicking away on her professional heels with the man Joyce following behind, and Chloe Yolen had vanished entirely, so there was nothing left but to accompany Praggor. Laurel accepted his proffered hand, and he helped her step down from her cryo pod. The concrete floor was warm under her bare feet, and vibrating slightly as if shaken by huge engines.

Praggor led Laurel across the loading bay, keeping an uncomfortably firm grip on her wrist. She looked around as fast as she could, taking in as much as her still-bleary eyes would allow. People in lab coats, carrying clipboards, were busy opening the other cryosleep pods. Some of the inhabitants therein were sitting up, rubbing their heads, and no doubt asking the same questions that Laurel had. Two more of the huge bay doors were open on the other side of the room, and the rain was blowing in to spatter over the concrete, turning it slick and shiny. A squat armored mobile was parked along the far wall, being refueled, and there were several choppers tacked down with ropes just inside the doors. There were also many, many people: in lab coats and camouflage fatigues and jumpsuits and overalls and civvies, and all of them had somewhere to be.

Laurel didn't know which of these bustling individuals to study, so she stared up at Praggor instead.

He was a very tall man, with coffee-colored skin and narrow gold-brown eyes. His curly black hair and beard were trimmed short and neat. Laurel would've expected him to be a soldier, with his huge shoulders and strong hands, but he wore the dark slacks and crisp button-down shirt of some sort of official or office worker. She squinted at the ID tag clipped to his front pocket. It identified him as 'Gerald Praggor, Bursar', but that meant nothing to her.

Laurel almost had to run to keep from being dragged behind him as he strode out of the loading bay. Her feet smacked against the concrete, and her mood increased slightly despite herself. She was never allowed to go barefoot at home, and Mama would have scowled to see her daughter in public wearing nothing but her nightclothes. Kidnapped or no, the rebellious part of her that is common to all twelve-year-olds was delighted by this tiny victory.

"Where are we going now?" she asked Praggor as they reached the end of the massive chamber.

He looked down at her. "You'll be put up in Building D," he said. "There's a fair few men and women there already. None so young as you, though. What's a sweet gal like you doing in a place like colonial space, anyways?"

"Papa's an atmospheric technician," Laurel said. "Mama works in business so we were always moving around. We were going to move to the world that Papa had just finished making livable, only now I'm here. Mr. Praggor, when can I go home?"

Praggor frowned and glanced away. "Not for a while yet," he said. "I don't make the rules and I don't like them all that much, but I'd be damned stupid if I didn't follow them. Headquarters needs every man, woman and child as can be of use, and they'll use any way they can to get what they want."

"That's illegal and wicked and, and, and completely horrible!" cried Laurel. "And here I was thinking you might be a decent human being."

"I don't like it either, kid," Praggor said.

"If you don't like it, then quit! Or better, _do _something!"

Praggor shrugged. "The pay is good and the job security's not bad either, but quitting ain't always part of the picture. You get too deep into some stuff and there's not so many ways out."

That _really _sounded like something out of a bad adventure story. Laurel fumed as she trotted alongside Praggor, biting a thumbnail in resolute petulance and thinking of ways to get herself out of this. She ran over her assets in her mind and almost shouted aloud in frustration when she realized how few they were.

Too many factors were conspiring against her. She had no idea where she was or what these people wanted her for— she didn't even know who they _were_. She did have the name of the station, Judecca, but that would only help if she had some means of communicating with the outside world. She couldn't use a radio even if she somehow managed to get ahold of one, personal communicators only worked within the user's solar system, and standard telephones were out of the question.

She couldn't pick a lock, she wasn't in particularly good shape, and she seriously doubted there would be anyone on the station willing to stick their neck out to help her escape. What Praggor said weighed heavily on her: whatever they were doing here was in all likelihood seriously bad, and blatantly illegal besides. Would they really care about one scrawny little girl?

In her favor, Laurel had the fact that she was small enough to fit into an air duct, the fact that people were more likely to underestimate her given her age, the fact that these people apparently needed her very badly, and... and that was it. She would have to rely entirely on these and her wits if she was going to learn anything.

First, though, she had to lose Praggor. The easiest way was just to follow him to her assigned quarters and then let him leave, but Laurel didn't think they were just going to give her free reign of the place once she'd reached her destination. She was certainly not strong enough to break his grip; even if she found a weapon or other way to get free, doubted she could outrun him, and this place was far too crowded to make an escape anyways.

They'd long since left the docking bay behind and were now traveling through a wide, low corridor. The floors were of corrugated metal, the kind made with diamond-shaped holes, and they clanged gently with every step. Looking down, Laurel could see the outlines of many more walkways below them. She wondered how far down the facility went.

It was dark in the hallway; the fluorescent tube lights embedded in the ceiling every five feet or so did little to illuminate the deepest corners. Even the light coming in from the small round windows was watery and gray, and the rain hit the glass so heavily that Laurel could make out nothing beyond.

Praggor wove through the hallway with practiced ease, the other men and women stepping aside to let him and Laurel through. There were a lot of people in lab coats, and there were a lot — a _lot_ — of soldiers. The man called Joyce had mentioned the military, but this didn't feel like a war zone. The fact that all the soldiers carried flamethrowers, and that none of the civilians seemed to find anything out of the ordinary about this, raised the hairs on the back of Laurel's neck. She didn't like to swear, but honestly, what the Hell_ was_ this place?

The hall ended at what looked like an elevator stop but turned out to be a high-speed tram. Praggor stuck his ID card into a reader when the train came to a halt, and the doors hissed open. He stepped into the car tugged Laurel in after him.

"Four stops," he said, and the tram rushed off.

Laurel stared out the window as they sped along the tramway. Through the rain, she could make out the building they'd just left, rapidly receding behind them. It sat on the edge of a low group of similar structures, elevated above ground level on stocky legs and connected to each other by open-air walkways. Huge trees with spreading leaves stretched up between these, but they were the only indication that there had ever been anything but buildings here. Now it was concrete and steel as far as the eye could see, with blue lights blinking along a high barbed-wire fence.

The tramway curled around then and Laurel lost sight of the compound. They were heading over open, grassy ground now, and the closest buildings were quite a long ways from the track. They were heavy, low, and windowless, surrounded by guard towers every hundred feet and bathed in floodlights so that the entire area glowed hazy-white and blinding.

"What is that?" Laurel asked.

Praggor's face was dark. "The barracks," he said. "I've never been in there and I never want to."

"It looks like a prison."

"I'd rather be locked in a prison for the rest of my life than set one foot in there."

"And they put _people_ in those?"

"Oh, no," Praggor said. "No, kid, they don't. No _person _would ever want to go in there, and no matter how bad a man can get, there's nobody that deserves to be in there, either."

Laurel stared hard at the low complex, deep in thought. Every corner she turned in this strange place unearthed a new mystery. Her curiosity warred with her desire to be somewhere, anywhere, else. She pressed herself closer to the window as the barracks receded, eventually vanishing into the rain.

The tram sped onwards. The first stop was at an exterior platform set into the edge of a tall building constructed from blocks of sand-white stone. Quite a few passengers debarked here, and almost twice that took their place. Most of the newcomers wore dark business suits and carried briefcases. Laurel glanced between them and the place from which they had come, craning her neck to see the whole thing. At the very top of the building an orange neon sign fizzed in the rain. "WEYLAND-YUTANI," it read in huge capital letters, and underneath, in a smaller subscript: "BUILDING BETTER WORLDS."

Laurel was skeptical about that. At least now she had a name for her captors.

Two more stops, the train rushed on, and then, as a rambling, many-towered structure came into view, Praggor rose. He tugged Laurel to her feet as well, and she stared up at the buildings as they exited the tram. There were six huge cylindrical towers in this complex, right on the edge of the ocean. The furthest one was more over sea than land, and the angry, lashing waves crashed against its outer walls.

Praggor and Laurel were among only five people to depart the tram here. Of the others, two wore lab coats and the third bore army fatigues and the standard-issue flamethrower and shotgun. None of them looked at Laurel, although the soldier said a few hushed words to Praggor and gestured in her direction. Praggor muttered back and nodded, but Laurel couldn't hear what they were saying despite her best efforts.

Praggor led her down a narrow alley between two of the tall buildings. Each of them had only a single, heavy door stenciled with a letter: "A" and "C" were the two that Praggor pulled Laurel between. They were so tall that they blocked all but the barest mist of rain; the concrete under Laurel's feet was dry. None of the buildings had windows.

"Not very homey," Laurel said, and her voice felt flat and small between the towers.

"Sorry," said Praggor. "You'll get used to all the secrecy here."

"But… windows."

"There are holoscreens inside," Praggor said. "There are no windows in any of the living quarters, even the executives'. It's a safety feature."

"But," Laurel said again, and gave up. There was really no point.

They wound down the walkway between the buildings and stopped before the second-to-last one, marked as building D. The one next to it, E, was the one Laurel had seen from the tram, the one which protruded almost entirely over the ocean. Out here, the roar of the waves was very, very loud. Frigid water rolled up and washed over Laurel's feet before receding, and then returned several seconds later. Laurel shivered. She was still dressed only in the cotton shirt and shorts that were all she could wear in cryosleep; even sheltered from the rain, she felt frozen through.

"Here we are," Praggor said, and once more slotted his ID card into the exterior lock.

Another obstacle. Laurel grumbled under her breath. She had no ID and was pretty sure she wouldn't be getting one, at least not one that granted security clearance.

The lobby of the building was bright white and sterile, with a security desk and a couple of low slick couches. The only other feature in the room was an elevator, which again needed identification from Praggor.

They stepped into the elevator and rode all the way to the top floor. Laurel might have been made a bit happier by that if the building had had windows, but there was nothing she could do about it and no point in crying now. That was for later, when there was no-one around to see.

The hall into which Laurel and Praggor stepped was as austere, white and gleaming as the lobby had been. Security cameras swiveled in each corner, tracking her and Praggor's movements. There were deep couches set along the walls, and several people sat in these. Laurel stared at them as she passed by. None of them seemed to really register that she was there, or else didn't care. All wore clothes in various states of dishevelment. There was a large predominance of heavily-shadowed eyes. It was eerily quiet.

Laurel didn't like it one bit.

Praggor led her all the way down the hall to a door marked 204. Yet again he slid his ID into the reader; the door opened silently, revealing a low bed, a dresser, and another door, this one standing ajar. Praggor released his grip on Laurel's wrist, and she stepped into the room, noticing how tiny it really was. Then she realized that Praggor had not followed her and turned around.

"This is as far as I go," Praggor said from the doorway. "Afraid it's as far as you go too." His expression was unreadable, his tone grim.

"Praggor, what's wrong—" Laurel started, but the door _whish_ed shut between them before she could finish. She stepped forwards and slammed both palms against the door, but there was no response from the other side. She could see no way to open the door, and quickly found that the only other one in the room led to a minuscule bathroom that was barely more than a toilet and shower. There was no way out and only one way in. She was trapped, like a rat in a cage.

Suddenly alone, Laurel did the only thing she could do. She hurled herself ineffectually against the wall, and then slid down it to press her face into her knees and wrap her arms over her head, sobbing helplessly. "Mama," she whispered, "Mama, Mama, where are you, I want my mom, I want my mom, _I want my mom!_"

Her sobs broke off into a furious, fruitless scream that cut short only when she had no more air to give it; then she toppled over and fell slowly, slowly, to the floor. There she lay, curled up and shivering, staring blankly at the whitewashed wall. She did not know how long she remained there, drained of all energy and all emotion save for a terrible gnawing emptiness. After a while consciousness became too painful and too difficult, and she sank into a shallow and discordant sleep.

* * *

_._

* * *

_P.S.: Next chapter we'll be spending some time with our favorite murderous aliens! ARE YOU GUYS EXCITED BECAUSE I AM EXCITED. SO EXCITED_


	3. The Taming of the Shrewd

_AN: Hey again guys! Thanks for all your nice reviews! _

_If you all wouldn't mind giving me some feedback, I'd like to know how I'm doing with Laurel. It's been so long since I was twelve that I can barely remember what it was like, and I'm trying to find a good balance between "childlike and bratty" and "not too useless or annoying". Since she's to be the main narrator starting pretty soon, I'm happy to make whatever character modifications you guys feel would be prudent in order to make her likable (at least as a character, if not as a person ahaha)! _

_And I know it's blasphemy to have the xenos show up so late, I'm sorry! (Also (a)Yoshtar, I actually have only seen the four 'Alien' movies… so the predators/predaliens/everything not in 'Alien' through 'Resurrection' will not be making an appearance. Sorry if that's a disappointment!)_

* * *

**CHAPTER THREE:** THE TAMING OF THE SHREWD

* * *

_01:10:03:06:09:31:18.71:0.0:00:00:00:00:00:00_

**CHLOE YOLEN, SECURE LAB**

Chloe stood ramrod-straight, back to the door, holding her clipboard in front of her like a shield as the creature approached. She always hated this part, and she knew what was coming, and _it _knew that she knew what was coming, and she swore to God and back that it was laughing at her.

It stood very still, six feet away, and _grinned _at her.

Chloe didn't move. She'd tried yelling, jumping around, punishing it with liquid nitrogen, and straight up pretending to ignore it, but the results were always the same. It always got to her and her paranoia. It always laughed at her. Some of the scientists thought these things were just animals, but—

**_WHAM._**

The creature's pharyngeal jaw shot out and slammed into the four-inch-thick plexiglass with enough force to make the observation window's bolts groan. Chloe jumped about a foot in the air and let out an embarrassingly high-pitched yelp. The xenomorph— the biggest one, the first unit born, with a shallow '1' branded into its forehead— reeled away from the window, hissing like a delighted steam engine.

"Very funny," Chloe muttered, glaring at the thing. It glanced back at her over its craggy shoulder and swished its tail, lips pulled back over its jagged, needle-like teeth. Whether it was snarling or smirking, Chloe wasn't sure, but she had a feeling it was the latter.

This one was the oldest, the smartest of the surviving units produced since the project began. All the xenomorphs were creepy in Chloe's opinion, but there were times that Subject One's behavior was downright unnerving. Her first day working with it, it had pulled that same trick with the mouth and the glass and the laughing at her, and Chloe had screamed— actually _screamed_, shrill and prolonged, it was _so _embarrassing— and hurled herself out of the interaction chamber, sweating and shaking. Every day since then, it had delighted in doing the exact same thing, and every day since then, Chloe had fallen for it. She knew it was going to happen and she _still _freaked out, every single time.

Her nerves were not cut out for this. She was meant to be training reconnaissance animals on rocky Khartoum, not trying to establish intelligent communication with these… _things_.

Chloe set her clipboard down on the desk and settled into the rolling chair, already weary though her day had barely begun.

The creature tracked her every movement with its huge blunt head. She could sense its gaze, even though it had no eyes to speak of, boring into her back.

After a moment in which Chloe just sat at the observation room's little desk, eyes closed and hands covering her face, and pretended that all this was just a bad dream, she sat up. Spinning gently around, she skated the chair until it was directly in front of the xenomorph, and leaned towards it with her elbows on her knees.

"Hello, One," she said, just as she did every day.

Just as happened every day, Subject One said nothing. Chloe was pretty sure they couldn't talk, but the previous experiences that Weyland-Yutani and other corporations had had with these beings more than proved just how intelligent they were. Even if they weren't able to speak the way humans thought of it, she had no doubt that they could understand a large part of what went on around them. They were observational learners, quick thinkers, and brutally efficient. They needed no air and could survive dizzying extremes of pressure and temperature. If only there was some way to train them, they'd make the perfect allies.

As head of the animal behavior department, finding the way to train them was Chloe's job. She was beginning to think it was hopeless.

"I know you can understand me," she said to the monster before her, though in truth she knew no such thing.

She got no response from her recalcitrant charge other than the slow switching of its bladed tail-tip. Sitting perfectly still on its haunches with its tail waving at its feet, it put Chloe in mind of nothing more than some immense, demonic cat.

Chloe shifted in her seat, crossing her legs under her.

In the observation chamber, One shifted too, lifting its hands off the floor and crossing its hind legs to sit up straight, more like a human and less like an animal, as if in mimicry of Chloe.

It had never done _that_ before.

On impulse, Chloe stood up very slowly and remained perfectly still, her face mere inches from the thick plexiglass.

There was a moment's delay. Gracefully, almost delicately, One unfolded itself and rose to its feet as well.

Chloe's breath caught in her throat. She dared not move even to let it out. She had been interacting with Subject One for almost a month, and she'd never had anything approaching communication or understanding before, apart from their little game of mockery and fear. Was it just mimicking her out of instinct, as some parrots or dogs did? Was it trying to convey understanding or— could it be— cooperation? Or was it luring her into another jump scare?

The latter was most probable, but it also presented a fascinating opportunity to Chloe. There was that calculating cleverness again. These creatures, these _beings_, were more than just beasts, Chloe was sure of it.

While they stood in opposition, regarding each other, One had shut its jaws and lowered the skin around its lipless teeth, until the only indication of it having a mouth at all was the ridged bumpy indents on each side of its face. With those horrible, horrible fangs no longer exposed, it looked significantly less threatening.

Slowly, oh so slowly, Chloe raised a hand and placed it flat on the pane in front of her.

Again there was a slight hesitation. Then One raised its hand and placed it opposite Chloe's.

Her heart was now beating very fast, and her stomach was flipping with nervousness. She could feel the sweat beading on her brow, and her head was light and spinning. If she made any sudden movements, she thought, she was going to throw up. One's palm was almost twice the length of her whole hand, and its huge head rose at least three feet above her, even though the floor of the observation room was a good foot higher than that of the chamber in which the xenomorph stood. Chloe's fingers twitched anxiously against the glass, leaving misted outlines: The curved claw on One's smallest inner finger was the length of her palm and half again.

Perhaps the xenomorph noticed the direction in which her eyes flicked. Perhaps it smelled her fear, or saw the expression— a mix of terror and wonder and horrified joy— upon Chloe's face. Perhaps, probably, it had been planning this from the beginning. Whatever the cause, One _surged_, all at once, and closed what remained of the gap between them. Eight feet of glossy black alien slammed into the plexiglass, sending Chloe leaping back with her heart in her mouth and her eyes clotted with pulsing green-black blots. The window creaked and groaned, cracks lacing along the edges of the bolts that fixed it in place, but it did not shatter. Chloe sat down hard, gasping, completely blind with panic, unable to speak or move. Distantly, she could hear the xenomorph making that spine-chilling, high-pitched _shree _sound, the one that invaded her dreams on dark nights and kept her from sleeping.

Chloe's vision returned enough for her to see Subject One swaying like a snake just behind the window, outer jaw fully unhinged in further mockery of some massive viper, pharyngeal jaw snapping and scraping at the pane. Viscous saliva dripped from the knobby jaws of its inner mouth, and its claws screeched faintly against the plexiglass. Its inner teeth left scratch marks wherever they met the window. When it saw that her eyes were open, it struck at the glass with both hands, shrilling and snarling all the more loudly.

Chloe gulped, and gasped again, and then rolled over onto her hands and knees and lost her breakfast on the floor of the interaction room.

Above her, One was still laughing.

* * *

**MASON GAUPHNER, PHD., CORPORATE OFFICES **

"The corporate inspection is in one week. Our margin for error is at absolute zero, and you're telling me you _don't want to work with the animals anymore?_"

The head naturalist cowered in the face of Dr. Gauphner's anger, shaking her head.

"No sir," she said meekly. "N-not all of them. Just Subject One. It doesn't like me and I—I really don't like it. Sir."

Gauphner pinched the bridge of his nose and counted slowly to ten. Was she _kidding_ him? Did she _know _how much was at stake here? "Yolen," he finally said through gritted teeth, "Subject One is our prime specimen. It's smarter, stronger, and more dangerous than any of the others we have here. If you can't train it, we'll have to dispose of it, and do you know. How much. One unit. Costs."

"Y-yes, sir," Yolen said. "I'm sorry sir. I'll try to find a way to work with it."

"Don't _try_, Yolen," Dr. Gauphner growled. "_Do. _It responds to basic commands with ninety percent consistency by the end of the week, or it and your career alike are terminated. _Do you understand_?"

"Yes sir," Yolen whispered, and fled.

* * *

**YOLEN**

_What we need, _Chloe thought as she made her escape from Dr. Gauphner's office and practically ran down the hall, _is some sort of human Queen_.

She'd been over the précis of all of Weyland-Yutani's previous encounters with the xenomorphs hundreds of times. Every time the creatures had been without a Queen, they'd been erratic, violent, impulsive, and instinctual; every time a Queen had been present, they'd been calculating, analytical, worked collaboratively, and all in all been far too dangerous. The Queen's current presence on Judecca station— albeit separated from her offspring by meters of concrete, steel, lead, and water— was practically suicide; not having her, on the other hand, would have rendered the project completely pointless.

But there was one human that had survived some sort of DNA transfer, and she'd shown signs of being able to communicate with the xenomorphs directly… The records ceased before any real information on that incident could be given. Even her name had been entirely purged from all databases. But it made Chloe think.

What if there was a human being who could communicate directly with the units but still have the company's best interests at heart? She knew that some of what Dr. Jeong did in those godforsaken biolabs was geared towards a synthesis of human and xenomorph DNA, but none of Jeong's subjects had ever survived. And anyways, it was too dangerous. If the balance was too high, the subject would be killed; too low, and they wouldn't be able to do what was necessary. But if it was just right…

It would never happen. Even if Dr. Jeong managed to do the impossible, it would take too much time. The xenomorphs _were _smart enough to be trained. Figuring out how was just another hurdle. It was up to Chloe to get over, under, or through it.

She wandered out of the executive wing, still deep in thought, and made her way back to her own little office. It sat on the very edge of the holding cells, too close to the xenomorphs for comfort. It was small and cramped, and the upper quarter of the wall was obscured by a thick chute of white piping of unknown provenance. Chloe hated her office, but at least she didn't have to spend too much time there.

She dumped her papers on her desk, adding to an already-teetering pile, and slumped into her chair. For a moment she just sat, exhausted. Then she shoved a few escaping wisps of blond hair out of her eyes and leaned forwards to jab the button on her intercom.

"Rick," she said wearily into it, "get me Subject One."

"Wh—but you just had him out this morning," her chief assistant's voice said fuzzily through the speaker. "He's not due out for another week."

"_It'_s due to be dead in another week along with any other job prospects I might have, as per Dr. Gauphner's orders," Chloe said. "If I don't have some sort of breakthrough by Friday, he's firing me."

"You've got to be joking. That's bullshit!"

"Tell me about it. Just get One into the obstacle course, would you? It and I need to have a little chat."

...

When Chloe arrived at the observation room above the facility's training course, though, Subject One did not appear to be there. Chloe peered through the holding pen's glass wall, brow furrowed. The pen at the edge of the facility's makeshift course was a huge cylinder of glass, with plate-steel floors and a one-way trapdoor set into the ceiling. It was too high up for a xenomorph to jump, and the walls were too slick to climb, so there was one way in and no way out. Any attempt to force the mechanism in the floor that opened out into the training course would result in the whole tube being flooded with ammonia— highly toxic, as a base, to the acid-blooded creatures. There was nowhere the xenomorph could be.

"Rick, I thought I told you to have One sent to the holding pen," Chloe said into her earpiece.

"Ms. Yolen, I, I did, he—it was sent there ten minutes ago."

Chloe felt her blood run cold. Stiffly, hunching her shoulders and preparing for the worst, she turned around.

Nothing.

The small concrete chamber was completely empty. Fluorescent floodlights bathed the entire room in a dazzling white light. The metal blinds over the window into the obstacle course were shut, laying flat against the glass beyond. The only thing on the desk was a computer terminal and someone's abandoned cup of half-finished coffee. The arrays of camera screens surrounding it were shut off, retracted flush into the wall. There were no shadows in which the xenomorph could be hiding.

She shot a glance back at the holding pen.

Nothing again.

Confused, frightened, and just the slightest bit annoyed— was this _really _happening to her, right after she'd been yelled at by Gauphner? It was _completely_ unfair— Chloe began to back up. She glanced about as quickly as she could, seeking for some sign of Subject One.

_Still_ nothing.

Chloe sighed in frustration and blew her loose hair out of her eyes. Maybe there was a holdup in the pens. It could be extremely hard to catch the creatures sometimes, and One was more cantankerous than most. There were many precautions and safeguards to be checked and double-checked, so perhaps the soldiers who manned the facility were just having a little trouble.

Irritated, Chloe slumped back against the glass curve of the holding pen.

And then leapt forward with a shriek as something thudded hard against her back. She whirled around to see that Subject One had somehow managed to insinuate itself into the groove around the ceiling trapdoor. It had tucked itself into the mechanism so tightly it had been almost completely invisible, and when Chloe had leaned against the tube, it had dropped its tail down and slammed it into the glass behind her.

"Well, congratulations," Chloe said, when her heart rate had slowed somewhat, "you got me. Again. Am I going to have to start keeping score?" She put her fists on her hips and tried to look unruffled, but her voice and hands were shaking. Subject one hissed merrily and uncoiled itself from the ceiling. Chloe watched it unfold, struck suddenly by how _graceful _it was. Grotesque and menacing, to be sure, but oddly beautiful as well, like a millipede whose scales turned iridescent in the light. It came down headfirst, unfurling like the head of a fern, and hung suspended at Chloe's eye level, swaying slightly. Its arms were tucked under it, hands dangling, and it cocked its head from side to side in quick, jerky movements as it watched her. Chloe gave it a suspicious smile.

"You've had your fun, you slippery bastard," she said to it. "Are you going to behave now?"

One opened its mouth and mewled, a sound like a gregarious pneumatic piston. Its inner teeth scraped ineffectually against the glass.

"I'm going to take that as a 'yes'," Chloe said. "Listen, you. Dr. Gauphner wants to shut me down because of you. If you and I don't make nice and pretend we're friends, he's going to kill you and get rid of me, and being got rid of from this sort of project is usually a little too permanent."

One remained hanging in the same spot, perfectly motionless. Chloe ran a hand through her hair, straightened her ponytail. "Christ, this is pointless," she muttered, and turned away, the hand holding her clipboard on her hip, the other still toying with a lock of hair.

There was a _tink-tink_ing on the glass behind her. Cautiously, she turned around. Subject One was tapping on the inside of the tube with one of its long inner fingers. It tipped its head back and forth and pointed down at the floor, still swaying gently from side to side.

"That's the obstacle course," Chloe said, nonplussed.

One pointed more urgently and mewled again.

"You… want to go down there?"

An urgent, impatient hiss. The speed of One's swaying increased.

"All right, all right!" Chloe hurried to get moving, suddenly feeling clunky and fumbling. She juggled her clipboard into her other arm and headed to the control panel that opened the door to the obstacle course. The aperture at the bottom of the holding pen spun open, and Subject One released its hold on the ceiling trapdoor and dropped catlike into the maze below.

Chloe grinned to herself as she hurried to cast open the metal shutters and switch on all of the displays. The multitude of screens came to life, tilting on their pivots and sliding out of the wall to surround Chloe. Subject One came into camera view on one of the many screens, sniffing around at the head of the maze. It had understood. It had _understood _the threat to its life, and initiated communication with her of its own volition!

This was… this was beyond fantastic. This was more progress in fifteen minutes than she'd had in the past month's worth of work with the xenomorph.

Chloe activated the maze's PA system. The obstacle course was a huge tangle of concrete, metal, and plexiglass, a space the size of two warehouses' worth of puzzles, traps, levers, buttons, pulleys, elevators, and other obstructions to remove or avoid. It was designed to test not only the xenomorphs' problem-solving skills, but also their ability to take suggestions and orders.

"One," she called through the intercom.

On the bottom-left screen she saw Subject One's head jerk up in the direction of the PA. It stood halfway between all fours and upright, one hand on the ground, the other tucked under it: poised for action, perfectly still but for the twitching of its tail. Chloe allowed herself another broad, delighted grin. "Climb up to the top of that wall there."

Chloe pointed; inside the maze, a large screen on the far wall relayed her gesture to One. It followed her finger to the low concrete wall she had indicated, and then glanced back to her image on the screen. Chloe's grin widened. It was listening to her. It was _listening _to _her_! "You ready, One? We're going to try something different today."

* * *

_AN: How many of you think this is going to go the way Chloe expects it to? SHOW OF HANDS. _

_(shocking spoiler: it's totally not)_

_also here have a brief bio lesson in case you're wondering what the fuck a pharyngeal jaw is: it's that creepy inner mouth and it's actually something in nature! Moray eels and some other fish have them because they don't have the muscles necessary to swallow, so the secondary mouth will grab the chewed-up food and pull it down the animal's throat. I ALWAYS WONDERED WHAT THAT SECONDARY MOUTH WAS FOR, I just learned this and am really excited so I thought I would share it with you!_


	4. Progress

_AN: ugh, sorry for the long chapter, and I tried to ramble less this time too, bleh I:{ (in other words, thanks for the feedback, Yoshtar, you rock! Glad you like good ol' Subject One, too; he'll be pretty important really soon ahaha)_

_Again, any thoughts on Laurel are much appreciated! I know female OCs can go south really easily, so I'm trying to keep her as engaging as possible. Especially since, starting next chapter, she's going to be the primary narrator, and we'll be having less from Anna and Chloe. I won't be insulted if you don't like something about her, so give me any and all suggestions you have!_

* * *

**CHAPTER FOUR: **PROGRESS

* * *

_01:10:03:01:05:57:56.54:0.0:00:00:00:00:00:00_

**SPECIALIST ENDER, BIO WING A**

"You're up early," Ender said when Dr. Jeong came into the biolab, nursing a cup of tar-black coffee and looking like she really wanted to ruin someone's day.

Dr. Jeong replied with a muffled grumble that might've been "fuck you".

"Same to you," Ender said pleasantly, swiveling away from Jeong's death glare and returning to his toxin analyses with a smug smile. Dr. Jeong would love to stick him on a table and fill him with alien spawn, no doubt, but she'd have to answer to Gauphner for that and she knew it. Baiting her was Ender's primary source of enjoyment these days, and it was _so _easy.

Jeong shuffled past him, hunched deep inside her big black peacoat. She liked black. She probably thought it made her look impressive and important. Ender thought it made her look like a particularly foul-tempered raven, and told her so at every opportunity.

"Corporate inspection tomorrow," he said, after several minutes' worth of rancorous silence had oozed from Dr. Jeong's corner.

"Yes," Jeong said icily. "I'm aware. Could you leave me alone for ten minutes, just for once?"

"Not a problem," Ender said. He clipped a new slide into his microscope and returned to work. The compound he was currently studying was fascinating: an ionic molecule not unlike sulfuric acid, but far more unstable. It wasn't difficult to see why the xenomorphs had used this substance for blood; it oxidized whatever it could, whether it had technical nutritional value or no. Ender would kill for a chance to dissect one more thoroughly: he would not be surprised if this substance were used as digestive fluid too. Combining respiration and metabolism into one simple and elegant mechanism… no wonder they were such hardy creatures. They really were things to be admired.

Ender paused in his work, checked his clock. "It's been ten minutes, Anna," he said sweetly.

"I am going to stab you with a scalpel," Jeong said, though much of the venom had left her voice. He glanced behind him. She was bent over one of the terminals at the lab's computer hub, coffee in hand, long black hair spilling down over one shoulder, scrolling intently through some lab report or other. "Huh. You sure about this, Ender?"

Ender paused in his— _purely scientific, _he assured himself— analysis of her hair. "I beg your pardon?"

"This proposal for surgery. You cited a nineteenth-century procedure, Ender, that's pretty sad."

"Excuse me, I check my sources," Ender said, nettled. "It's legitimate."

Dr. Jeong gave him an unimpressed stare. "Please," she said. "Sloppy fact-checking is not on the list of reasons you annoy me. I know better than to doubt your research. But—" she sighed, looking slightly more irritated than usual— "it's a sad commentary on the state of this project, at the very least, if we have to resort to consulting four-hundred-year-old medical records."

"If it works, though..." Ender said, leaving the end of the statement open.

"Yeah, _if_." Jeong sounded doubtful. She returned to the readout, narrowing her eyes. "Wait. '…_the edge of the hole in the stomach had attached itself to the edge of the hole in the skin, creating a permanent gastric fistula_'… Huh. I think you might actually be on to something, Ender. Who knew?"

"_I_ did."

"Shut up. All right, I'm going to get printouts on all of this and begin testing preparations. What d'you think, pig intestines?"

"They're similar enough to humans'," Ender agreed. "I'm sure the units won't mind if their breakfast is missing a stomach for one day."

"Yeah, watch as that's the thing they murder us all for in the end," Jeong muttered, mostly to herself.

Ender heard her anyways. "Please don't jinx it."

Jeong raised an eyebrow at him. "Superstition? From _you_?"

Her assistant shrugged and spread his hands. "Hey, even an artificial person needs something to help him get to sleep at night."

The look Jeong gave him might have been a smile, if the notion of her exhibiting anything resembling friendliness towards Ender weren't so preposterous. "I guess so," she said.

* * *

_01:10:03:00:08:01:33.24:0.0:00:00:00:00:00:00_

**SUBJECT 204-D, EAST RESIDENCE BLOCK**

Laurel was losing her mind. She didn't know how long she had been penned up in this little room; only that it had been _too_ long by far. She'd gotten the holoscreen working after some trial and error, and thank God for that, because at least she could get books on it, or pretend there was a window in her cell. But she was still trapped in this tiny space with no way out, not even into the hall. There had been other people in the hallway when she'd arrived, wandering around! Why wasn't she allowed to be with them?

She'd taken to pacing back and forth across the room in an attempt to keep from going completely stir-crazy, and this was how some temp found her when he came to collect her. Her head jerked up when she heard the door open, and she sprinted towards it full-tilt without even thinking about what she was doing, only to have her way painfully barred by an outstretched arm.

"Easy there, tiger," the temp said.

At that moment, as far as Laurel was concerned, he was the only thing standing between her and freedom. She tried to convey this with a noise halfway between a whine and a shriek. When this predictably failed to pass any useful information on to the temp, she threw herself forwards again and bit down on his arm as hard as she could.

The man let out a yell of pain and shoved her off him, so that she stumbled backwards and landed on her butt on the floor. "Crazy bitch!"

"Let me out!"

"Jesus, I can see why the doctor wants you for this. Now get up."

Laurel crossed her arms, folded her legs under her, and stuck out her chin. "Make me."

In retrospect, it was not the wisest thing she could've said. The temp strode across the room, grabbed a fistful of her long tangled hair, and began dragging her towards the door. Laurel shrieked and snarled and struggled, but the little man was surprisingly strong, and the pain in her scalp was making her eyes prickle with tears.

"Do you want to be sedated?" the temp growled, when she latched onto his fist and tried to pry it from her hair.

"No!"

"Then stop struggling!"

"_No!" _Laurel reached up with both hands and dragged her fingernails, ragged and sharp from her nervous habit of biting them, down his exposed forearm. He cried out again and kicked her in the stomach, hard. All the air left her with a _whoof _and she doubled over, clutching her abdomen. "You _jerk_!"

"Count on it." The temp reached up and pressed at his earpiece. "Dr. Jeong, this kid—" He broke off, having been interrupted by the person on the other side. Jeong—? Laurel thought she recognized that name, but she wasn't sure.

"Uh-huh," the temp was saying. "You really sure you need her? She's— yeah. Yeah. Look, Jeong, there are plenty of other— what does that have to do with— all right, all right, fine, yes! Yes. All right."

This last was said with much resignation, and then the temp removed his finger from his ear and looked down at Laurel, still hunched over and gasping for breath. "You're coming with me whether either of us like it or not," he said. "You can go on your feet or you can go strapped to a stretcher. It's your choice."

Laurel snarled at him like an animal and scrambled away on all fours down the hall. The other inmates watched with lackluster interest. Behind her, the temp slumped and sighed. "Stretcher it is," he said.

He was on her in three steps, kicking her legs out from under her and pinning her to the floor with his knees. Laurel took her turn to cry out in pain and tried to struggle free, but to no avail. Then a cloth came down in front of her face and was pressed over her nose and mouth. She tried to squirm away, but the temp was heavy, and her head was heavy, and thousands of tiny dots swam behind her eyes, and the cloth smelled so nice, and everything felt so heavy…

* * *

_01:10:03:00:08:48:06.05:0.0:00:00:00:00:00:00_

**DR. JEONG, CORPORATE OFFICES**

"Mason, I need a security override."

Dr. Gauphner looked up as Anna came bursting into his office. "And good morning to you too," he said pleasantly. "I'm doing very well, how are you?"

"Mason, come on, this is important, that Temple woman's going to be here any minute," Anna said. "I need access to the _Auriga_ précis. Ender and I have had a real breakthrough."

_That_ got her boss's attention; Gauphner leapt to his feet and leaned forwards, scrutinizing her intently. "Are you sure?"

Anna waved her bushel of papers. "I will be if I can get to the _Auriga _files," she said.

"Done." Gauphner didn't even hesitate. "Do you think you can have something concrete in the next—" he checked his watch— "twenty-eight minutes?"

"Yes," said Anna.

"_Wonderful_," Gaupher said, breathing a sigh of relief. He took hold of Anna's shoulder and began propelling her out the door. She had to hustle to keep up with him as he practically ran for the elevator, but it wasn't difficult: his excitement was contagious, and she found herself grinning broadly as they made their way down to the lobby. It was two stops on the high-speed tram to reach the secure laboratories; Anna spent the six minutes' transit bouncing anxiously in her seat, the points of her professional heels clicking erratically on the floor. They were cutting it _really _close working like this, with the inspection mere minutes away, but at least they had _something_, which was more than they'd had last night.

Gauphner and Anna all but sprinted down the hallway when the tram pulled in at the laboratory station; Anna skidded into the lab a yard ahead of Gauphner and threw herself down in front of her console.

"Ender!" she shouted, as Gauphner came up behind her. There was a moment's delay, and then the android exited the storeroom, kicking the door shut behind him. His arms were laden with cartons, a jar of amniotic fluid and several packs of disinfectants balanced on top.

"Good morning, Dr. Gauphner," he said, and Gauphner gave him a polite nod. Ender set his burden down on the lab's main table and came to stand with the two doctors. "What can I do you for?"

"Nobody says that any more, Ender," Anna snapped, but her heart wasn't in it. There were more pressing matters than her and her personal assistant's ongoing rivalry.

Dr. Gauphner leaned over Anna's shoulder and input his own username and password into the console as soon as the computer had booted up. His desktop flickered to holographic life, showing a list of files and folders that Anna had never seen before.

_$ER-CASE-2123_2389/NOS_SUL_AUR/_, read Gauphner's folder of choice, and then the file $_AUR/ERc08/. _This required further authorization, which Gauphner provided, too quickly for Anna to see the keys he had pressed. A document popped up, twenty pages long, detailing the events aboard the USM _Auriga _some thirty years previously.

"There you go," Gauphner said, straightening up.

"You're wonderful, Mason."

"So I've been told." He clapped Anna on the shoulder and exited the bio wing.

"Ender, download and analyze this for me. How's our sample coming?"

"Results exceed our best expectations," Ender said. "Fusing the stomach lining with the epidermis isn't the problem, it's getting the fetus out through the right hole. And we can't test that except on a living host; a dead pig's stomach isn't going to cut it."

"Tch. Well, you can't have everything," said Anna, rubbing her nose in thought. "May as well go through with the testing though, right? I mean, worst that could happen is we lose the host, but we'll still have the unit and that's not a bad thing. Is the latest subject prepped for surgery?"

Ender's eyes dimmed for a moment as he communicated with Medical. "Yes, Dr. Jeong."

Anna smiled, cold and sharp. "Then let's get to work."

* * *

_01:10:03:00:09:16:01.98:0.0:00:00:00:00:00:00_

**MORGAN TEMPLE, MICROSURGERY**

The Weyland-Yutani rep strode down the hall, researchers standing aside to let her pass. She was a tall, professional woman, in a red skirtsuit and stockings, and she could dispose of any of them with a single word. The Majesty project was dismally behind schedule, and with Weyland-Yutani stocks at an all-time low, the colonial effort needed to be ramped up post-haste.

An intern showed Morgan to the medical wing and almost tripped over herself on her way out the door. Morgan paused in the entryway and surveyed the whitewashed walls, sparkling countertops, glass-fronted cabinets, and neatly-ordered equipment, and allowed them all a grudging smile. At least they kept appearances up. She made a note on her datapad.

"You're off to a good start," Morgan said when she was approached by the chief medical officer. The woman was in her late thirties, sporting a lab coat over her scrubs, long dark hair pulled into a ponytail. She gave Morgan a thin, but not unfriendly, smile.

"I'm glad to hear that," she said, and held out a hand. "Dr. Anna Jeong, head of... human resources."

A joke. The attempt at humor was a feeble move to break the ice, no doubt. Morgan graced her with a short laugh and watched as the woman slumped with relief. These people were very nervous about her inspection. That said something. That said quite a few things, in fact. Morgan tapped another note into her datapad, noting Dr. Jeong's face grow slack and wary as she did so.

"A pleasure to meet you, Anna," Morgan said, looking up. "If you would be so kind as to present your team's progress on the Majesty project?"

"Yes," said Dr. Jeong. "If you'll follow me, we're in the process of devising a way to birth the _internecivus raptus _offspring without killing the human host. My head analyst found some data recently that has been most enlightening. Surgery is just about to commence."

"Experimental surgery is not what you are paid to do, Ms. Jeong."

If the good doctor noticed the slight against her, she did not react. "No," she agreed. "But I _am _paid to find a way to increase the efficiency with which units are born, and fewer hosts means fewer resources and less paperwork."

Morgan _hmm_ed. After a sufficient pause, she tapped at her datapad and said, "your explanation is acceptable. By all means, continue."

Dr. Jeong led Morgan across the main medical bay to an alcove door at the far end. She keyed a numerical passcode into the lock on the door and then slid her ID card through. The door opened silently, revealing a small observation room beyond. Morgan stepped forwards and looked down into a recessed operation bay. It was a small chamber, with plate-steel walls and long tubes of bluish lights set into the perimeter at the floor and ceiling. There was only one occupant, naked on an operating table in the very center of the room. Morgan stared at her skeptically.

"How old is that patient?"

Dr. Jeong shifted her weight from one foot to the other. "She's, ah, twelve, Ms. Temple."

"Twelve, you say? What part does she have to play in your… experiment?"

"We're creating a gastric fistula directly between her ribs. An epidermal polymer aperture will be installed to allow the _internecivus raptus— _xenomorphs, they're called— fetus to exit the chest without wounding the stomach, heart, or lungs."

"That's all well and good, but why this child?"

"At her age, her immune system won't be fully developed," Dr. Jeong said, more than a little hastily. "Previous subjects have resisted the introduction of xenomorph 'DNA', and too much will initiate some sort of… transformation." The doctor sounded like she did not want to continue down that particular conversational track. "But since she's so young, her body won't be able to effectively fight off even small amounts of the serum. She's already developed molecular regeneration at the most basic level due to the introduction of infinitesimal amounts of genetic material."

"Meaning…?" Morgan prompted.

"_Meaning_, small incisions on her arms and legs have already completely healed," Dr. Jeong said. "We made them last night. Such rapid recovery will also minimize exit trauma once she's been made a host."

Morgan made a note. "Good," she said, and Dr. Jeong swelled. "_But_," Morgan added, and Dr. Jeong deflated just as quickly, "she's a child. I doubt she volunteered for this."

"No," Jeong admitted. "Our providers hit the colonial transport she was on. The opportunities such a young subject presented couldn't be ignored."

"Who is she? Who is her family? It won't do to have someone searching the galaxy for her."

"Her stasis pod identified her as one Laurel Christoph," said Dr. Jeong. "Her mother was aboard the same ship as she was, but was killed during our providers', ah, capture of the vessel. Her father, identified as Michel Christoph, is estranged from the family, though there are no official divorce records. He doesn't play a significant role in his daughter's life at all, Ms. Temple. I doubt he even knows she's missing."

"Is he under surveillance?"

"Ah… no."

"Well." Morgan said no more than that, but her fingers flitted over her datapad's screen. Dr. Jeong had the grace to look sheepish.

"We'll get on that straightaway," she said.

"See that you do," said Morgan. She looked down at the sleeping child once more. An oxygen mask covered her nose and mouth, and IVs and leads and wires connected her arms and chest to a multitude of monitors and drips. Her eyes were sunken and rimmed by dark purple shadows, and her waist-length dirty-blond hair was tangled and matted. She looked almost corpse-like, pale and bony as she was; but with her fluttering eyelids closed and her faced slackened by anesthetics, she seemed as peaceful as though asleep on a soft feather bed.

* * *

_AN: by the way, a 'fistula' is a fusion between layers of tissue. The scientific-sounding stuff was stolen from the wikipedia article about that one dude with the hole in his stomach, from which we learned how digestion works: http**:**_/_/en_._wikipedia_._org/wiki/Alexis_St._Martin  
__It's really interesting!_


End file.
